As I sit here reading articles in the news about the
aftermath of the latest mass shooting, about the tragedy, about the shooter's
motives, about our politicians coming to our rescue to make this stop
happening, I can help but wonder where we
all have gone so wrong.
One article tells about how we are going to solve this
problem by passing new laws to control who has guns. The next story tells of a boy who takes a gun
to school because he is afraid he would be shot. In one rampage the shooter is confronted by
unarmed individuals who sacrifice themselves to save others. In another the gunman is stopped short by an
armed man, who doesn't shoot him, but forces him away from the people he is
attacking so that no one else will get hurt.
As a nation, as a society, it is time that we admit to
ourselves that we are broken. New gun
laws are only a band aid on bullet wound.
They might help on the surface, but the actual wound goes much deeper.
In the 1950s in our nation the top two complaints of
teachers in our schools were students talking in class and students chewing
gum. What has gone wrong in the last
sixty years to our world?
Over the past six decades in America, in the name of freedom,
we fill our children's minds with progressively more violent movies and more violent
video games and then act surprised when our children act violently. We fill
their eyes with bedroom comedy and bathroom humor and act surprised at the teen
pregnancy rate. We strive to provide our children a "better life" but
abdicate our social responsibilities in the name of freedom and individual
rights.
We need to step up and make ourselves, every one of us,
better. Not richer. Not stronger.
Better. Better at making choices
that are not harmful to our life or to others.
Better at caring what goes into ours and our child's mind. Better at taking responsibility for the
outcome of our lives and the lives of those whom we can influence.
The wounds of our society are not born from the lack of law,
or from the lack of enforcement by the authorities. It is born from the individual. Born from a society of individuals that see
no value in working toward a common good with common values that benefit us
all. Born from our belief that even if
we just do all the right things and take care of ourselves, that allowing
others to govern themselves in the way they see fit will somehow not touch us.
The issue at hand, my friends, has very little to do with
guns, or knives, or rocks, or clubs. It
goes much deeper than that.
